Cherry Shrimp Neocaridina denticulata as New Crustacean Model

The Crustacea form a large subphylum of arthropods after the subphylum Insecta, and includes ecologically and phylogenetically important classes. Several years ago, there is only one publicly available sequenced crustacean genome from the water flea Daphnia pulex. While this animal is shown to be powerful ecotoxicology model, its genome appeared to have undergone massive lineage-specific modifications. To provide a better model to understand decapod crustacean and arthropod evolution, we have introduced a new shrimp model Neocaridina denticulata. This animal has a relatively short life cycle and is easily cultivable in the laboratory to obtain different developmental and reproductive stages. Through sequencing its draft genome and comparing its developmental genes, hormonal pathway genes, mitochondrial genome, and other regulatory elements such as microRNAs to other metazoans, we suggest that this animal could be a prototypical model of decapod crustacean. Deep sequencing of its genome and transcriptomes are now undergoing, which we hope to use this model to explore the different genetic aspects, and better understand the crustacean and arthropod evolution.